


take heart

by flagpoles



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M, High School, WHY DOES THIS SHOW MATTER TO ME ITS FOR CHILDREN, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5800021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flagpoles/pseuds/flagpoles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is in that space that morphine puts you in just before sleep, where anything is possible. She could get over Lucas. She could kiss Lucas and Riley would still love her the same. She could create a planet where flowers don't die once you pick them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take heart

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is seventeen fucking pages and it is based off fourteen year old children who dress better than any child i've seen ever. 
> 
> Also, Riley/Maya friendship in abundance, because they are sunflowers who need each other.

Maya doesn’t know how this could have even happened.

 

Because Lucas is Riley’s; Lucas has always been Riley’s. From the minute they met him he’s been Riley’s, but they’re not twelve anymore and now she can't stop noticing him whenever he walks in a room.

 

The thing is, she's not good enough for him. She’s freaking her, getting drunk at Davy Malcom’s birthday party in June, refusing to go to their senior prom because she just didn’t want to, letting Aaron Slylo kiss her behind the bleachers with the knowledge of his girlfriend waiting for him in Chemistry like paint stripper down her throat.

 

It’s irrelevant that he and Riley have been over for nearly a year.  Maya knows Riley better than Riley knows Riley; she knows that’s he still holds out this hope that they’ll still be together one day. Riley isn’t in love with Lucas anymore, she’s in love with the _idea_ of Lucas. The idea of being her parents and marrying her middle school crush, to have 2.5 kids and a pretty house they bought together.

 

She isn’t a good person. She knows that and doesn’t listen to Riley whenever she tells her different because Riley is biased. Riley loves her too much, always has.

 

“I think short-stack has fallen into oblivion” he says at lunch, throwing a carrot stick at her and smiling. _God_ this is so _stupid._ It’s freaking _, Lucas,_ she shouldn’t want to kiss Lucas so badly her hands are shaking under the table.

 

“Not a chance, Sundance” she pulls the carrot stick out of her hair.

 

“Did you rhyme that on purpose?”

 

“Do you do that accent on purpose?”

 

He rolls his eyes without meaning it, before turning his attention to Farkle and his loud talk of the exams, which are months away. Maya mentally slaps herself back to real life, Riley is talking about a purple house she saw on seventh and how she has already fallen in love with it. Maya eats a French fry from her plate and pretends she’s been listening the whole time.

 

The thing about Huckleberry is that he’s so god damned good. He tutors freshmen on Thursday afternoons, brings bags full of cans to food drives that everyone else forgets, has a loyal streak to rival Mr Matthew’s. Huckleberry is so freaking wonderful. Fucking Huckleberry. Fucking feelings. Fuck in general.

 

She still goes out with everyone, eats ice-cream at _Topanga’s_ and flicks Farkle on the eye when he’s being a shit. It’s as if nothing is different because they're still them, Zay and Riley and Maya and Farkle and Lucas. The forever five, that’s what Riley wrote underneath the picture of them all in her locker.

 

Maya texts him photos of cowboy hats and horses, with captions like ‘your true love’ and ‘this horse is your best friend isn’t it. Don’t lie to me Cowboy I _know the truth_ ’. He always texts back the same photo of a god damn tiny stack of pancakes with ‘Maya look it’s you’ at the bottom.

 

Once, he texts her this in the middle of PE, and she stands on a picnic table so she can see where he is on the tennis courts, then flips him off. Mr Rogers starts marching over, and Maya can hear Sundance delightedly yelling from half way across the field, “Look! I think Rogers is going to give Maya detention!”

 

Luckily, Rogers heard him so then they're both in detention for a week because Rogers is a hard-ass who ‘hates fun’, at least according to Zay who is an unreliable source due to the fact that his idea of fun is being a shit. They play tic-tac-toe on the back of his hand and have a competition to see who can make the best paper plane. She wins but only because he gives himself such a bad papercut she has to drag him to the nurse, laughing her ass off and ignoring how neon-wired her wrist feels when it’s touching his as she pulls him down the hall.

 

She likes being around him, which she guesses comes with the territory of liking him. She gets food-poisoning once and he holds her hair back when she's throwing up over the toilets. He buys her a four dollar bottle of water after too, and walks her home because Riley has cheer practise. He’s so _nice,_ Maya doesn’t understand it. How can someone just be nice like that, like its nothing. Maybe if she's around him long enough she’ll learn.

 

His music taste is shit so she gives him all her old punk rock CD’s. He is dragged with Riley and her to go shopping and she tries out makeup she's thinking of getting on him, smearing the lipstick because she's giggling so much. She steals every pen he’s got and as payback he calls her ma’am for a week until she loses it and tries to club him over the head with her calculator while Zay holds her back. 

 

They go to the shopping, all five of them for college stuff like new bed covers and shower caps without bunnies on them (Riley). Farkle is pouring over laminated plastic posters with 760 numerals of Pie on them and Zay is chatting up the utterly uninterested counter girl. She climbs into the empty trolley because she's her and they’ve already been here for too long.

 

‘Push me Ranger Rick’

 

She doesn’t expect him to actually go through with it, but he puts in three spare lightbulbs beside her and doesn’t even ask why, just grabs the bar of the trolley and starts running. She’s surprised but somehow not, because she's never understood him anyway. Riley looks up at them from where a guy is explaining the merits of extra thick bath towels as they roar past down the aisle. Maya is screaming with her arms right over her head, yelling as everything blurs. She's going so fast her mind is thrumming, thoughts too quick for her brain.

 

He pulls to a stop at the end of the aisle at the sight of the furious looking shop manager. Maya can feel her heartbeat in her stomach.

 

 

“That’s not what the trolley is for” says the woman without smiling, tapping her foot on the linoleum.

 

“It is now.” Is all that Lucas says before wheeling around and careening out of the store’s automatic doors without looking back. She really is surprised now, so much so that she almost topples out the side of the cart as security starts to shout behind them. She doesn’t care though; this moment is spreading across her core like wet paint, hot pink and burning her insides.

 

‘GO FASTER’ she roars and turns to look at him, all long limbs and easy smile as he rips out of the carpark.

 

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK IM DOING’ he yells back.

 

They stop about two blocks away, Maya can hear Zay yelling a while away about that being ‘cool as hell ’and Riley saying they’re ‘completely stupid’ but she doesn’t care. She turns around until she's leaning on her knees getting marks from the bottom of the trolley, looking at him and almost being the same height if she straightens up. He’s panting and she's burning, this is the best thing about doing something you shouldn’t, the bit where there is still no consequences but you can taste in it your mouth

 

‘How does it feel to be bad, Friar?’

 

He looks at her, and something shifts in her chest. He’s leaning his hands on his knees and still breathing hard. She’s so close she can see all of his eyelashes.

 

‘Pretty damn good, Hart.’

 

They dump the trolley behind some bushes for some elated middle schoolers to find and Riley and Farkle walk back to pay for the lightbulbs that Maya honestly forgot were in there because Riley says it’s ‘technically stealing’ and also ‘illegal’. She is hit over the head with how much she loves her, then looks at Lucas with his blue shirt and half smile and hates herself a bit more.

 

Riley and Lucas only went out for a year and a half, but that’s still a year and half and when they were dating and, in that year and half, everything was fine. Good. Exactly as it should be. RileyandLucas. They even _sound_ good together. It’s not awkward anymore, their breakup wasn’t messy because they're  RileyandLucas and they needed to be friends after all of it. When Maya breaks up with people it’s loud and shatters windows, with a lot of throwing things and swear words hitting slammed doors.

 

Riley is going out with Beck Hamilton for Economics now. She tells Maya that she's going to breakup with him before graduation because she doesn’t see them as _it._ Maya wants to ask what the hell _it_ is, and if _it_ was Lucas and if Riley would hate her if she knew what she was thinking and if Riley feels lighter when he walks into a room or is that just her.

 

So she goes to Danielle Toren’s six-months-till--graduation party to take her mind off it, throws back shots like it’s her day job and dances on the table, kissing boys she can't see in the dark. She hears the word _whore_ behind her but doesn’t even bother even turning around, because maybe they're all right anyway. At the end of it all she sits on the front step of some stranger’s house and cries, because Riley deserves so much better than a best friend who wants to fuck her ex-boyfriend, and every time freaking Friar looks at her she wants to push him against the wall and kiss down his collar bone.  

 

At school he sits next to her in Chemistry and Geography, because he’s shit at map reading and she's shit at anything involving measuring large quantities of chemicals. He tells her that New Zealand is a state in Australia and she falls out of her chair she's laughing so hard. She puts her safety goggles on upside down and he takes a photo which he posts to his snapchat story, with the caption ‘ _cute’._ She threatens to stuff his head into a bowl of Hydrogen Fluoride. 

 

“What a week” she says, flopping in her seat next to him at break.

 

“Maya it’s Tuesday.”

 

“So?” she flicks him on the ear and takes his bag of chips while he’s distracted. He doesn’t even fight back because then Riley and Zay have arrived talking about a pop quiz in Bio and Maya is just sitting there, eating his chips and wondering why they're  salt and vinegar because he hates salt and vinegar, but they're her favourite. She doesn’t know what to take from this, so she pushes it to the back of her brain and makes room for Farkle in-between them.

 

Most nights she sits at home when her Mums out, watching shitty TV and eating Cool Ranch Dorito’s she took from Zay’s house. Riley calls nightly and on the ones she doesn’t, Lucas does. She sits on the phone with him at 2.a.m. narrating entire Jeremy Kyle episodes. He laughs and tells her that all the shows she watches are trash, and she tells him he’s trash and then she's not even watching the damn show anymore.  

 

In chemistry Aaron Sylo’s former girlfriend’s eyes bore into the back of her head, leaving it smoking. She didn’t hook up with him because he had a girlfriend; she hooked up with him because he kissed her. And he kissed her because she had a reputation. And that reputation meant that even if they hadn’t gotten to third under the bleaches everyone would have said they did. Everything is a direct result of something else, what was that physics law? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Her life is a disaster zone; she should really invest in some yellow tape to warn people.

 

At Zay’s birthday she takes a photo of all of them while they're not paying attention. Farkle is eating an enormous piece of cake that’s bigger than his head, while Riley laughs at him, head back and eyes closed. Lucas is drinking from a cup while a drunk Zay attempts to climb on his back, Smackle is trying to talk to him and he’s wearing a coat that looks just like the huge brown one he wore in middle school. Riley looks so happy and Zay looks so drunk and Lucas looks so calm and Smackle looks so smart and Farkle looks so _Farkle._ She keeps the photo all for herself, pinning it on the board in her room.

 

Riley sees it when she's over once and smiles, touching the edge of the paper.

 

“This is a good photo” she says, still smiling and Maya walks to stand next to her. Riley is most definitely taller than her now, but has the same hair and small Riley hands. She is struck with how proud she is to have her as a best friend at that moment, that out of all the people at any time ever existing she got to meet Riley, to have Riley and know her. Maya wants to drag her outside and pull her down the sidewalks screaming _this is my best friend! In the entire world! Isn’t she wonderful? She's so lovely and kind and pretty and good and I love her more than I think I'll ever love anything._

She reaches over and kisses her on the cheek. “Yeah. It is”

 

One night she's watching a rerun of ‘I Love Lucy’ at three .a.m. and  avoiding looking at the note on the fridge from her mum, saying she’ll be back from her out of town audition tomorrow and to go to sleep at a reasonable time. She swigs milk straight from the carton because Mathews isn’t here to give her that _look_ like a _teacher_ and because the dishwasher broke so all the cups are dirty and fuck anyone who suggests doing the dishes by hand.

 

The phone rings, and it’s not Riley because she hung up hours ago and it’s not her mum because she forgot her phone charger on the bench. But the caller ID says ‘HUCKLEBERRY’ so she answers.

 

“Ranger Rick? Shouldn’t you be lockin’ up them horse’s by n—“

 

“Maya”

 

Something about the way he says her name, like a breath he’s been holding in, makes her stop.

 

“Yeah” she responds because he’s not doing anything but breathing down the end of the line and its freaking her out a little.

 

“My Dad called. He can't come to graduation. Something came up.”  He sounds terrible, throat the kind of croaky that comes from not talking in a long time. She sits forward in her chair with the phone pressed so tightly to her ear it’s leaving a mark. She waits to hear if he’s crying, but he’s not. His sadness is seeping through her brain and making it waterlogged.

 

“Leave your window open” is all she says before hanging up, grabbing her apartment keys and running out of her house. It’s cold because she didn’t grab shoes but she keeps running, gravel sticking in-between her toes. She gets to his house ten minutes after she’d left her own, panting and pulling herself over his fire escape into his room.

 

He is leaning against the end of his bed with his legs splayed across the floor. He looks startled as she rolls in, her foot getting stuck as she does a literal forwards flip onto his floor.

 

“Ah Fuck! Why is your window so small? Shit, I think I cut my leg.” She slides across until she's leaning next to him, the long cut down her knee beginning to drip blood onto his carpet. He won't stop looking at her so she faces front and focuses on the feel of his bedframe against her back.

 

They don’t say anything for ages, just sitting there. She can feel her own heartbeat hitting against her breastbone.

 

“He finds it so easy to not see me.” his voice croaks through the silence and she can't help but look at him, as he stares at the door. “If I disappeared right now, I don’t think he would notice.”

 

“I would notice” she says before she can think about it too hard. He turns to her and scans her face like he’s checking she’s real. They’ve been looking at each other to long, she coughs and faces back toward his door.

 

“Riley would notice, and Zay and Farkle and probably Matthews and maybe Auggie, so stop talking about disappearing you utter shit.’ she nudges him with her shoulder, “no one is disappearing because … they aren’t, okay Huckleberry? I’ll duct tape you to this bed if I have to.”

 

There is a beat, and then: “Okay”

 

“Talk about disappearing again and I’ll punch you on the nose”

 

 He snorts, “I don’t doubt it.”

 

“Good. You shouldn’t doubt me.”

 

“Never have.” He states it like it would be impossible, ridiculous even, to doubt her, to think she was less than she is. She looks at him, and he is staring very hard at her face like he’s trying to memorise it, to learn it off by heart. Something roots in her chest then, and it feels like its tethering her here, to the end of his bed or maybe just behind his closed door.

 

 

She doesn’t remember falling asleep but she must have, because she wakes up spread across the floor with a pillow under her head and a string of plasters along her leg. A note has been sellotaped to her forehead:

 

_Short Stack,_

_I would’ve tried to move you but I was worried you’d try to punch me on reflex. I’m meeting Farkle so I can't stay but I found some pancake mix you can eat and I put it on the bench. Close my window when you leave, or don’t, because I expect you’ll forget anyway._

_Thanks for staying. You're excellent and I'm shit._

_Sincerely_

_Sundance/Bucky-Mc-Boing-Boing/Huckleberry/Cowboy/Ranger Rick/_ _Ranger Roy/Friar/Lucas_

_P.S don’t eat the pancake mix actually, it’s expired. Seriously Hart, DON’T EAT THE PANCAKE MIX._

At school on Monday when he’s with his baseball buddies, she walks up to him, pulls out the pancake mix from her bag and chugs the entire thing right there in the middle of homeroom. Someone calls “What the hell is she doing?” but it’s too late, she thwacks the empty bottle down onto his desk and struts past his desk to where Riley is giving her the _what are you doing and is it allowed_ look, the third most used Riley look next to _look at that cute puppy_ and _I adore you._

“You’re gunna be so sick!” he calls giddily to her back, she turns to him before flopping back into her chair.

 

“Worth it” she says and his face breaks out into a grin the size of the entire New York subway.

 

She is sick, violently, for three days, He comes by after school with the rest of them and laughs his ass off like the traitor he is. Riles strokes her forehead and Farkle gives her a ‘vomit drink’ that he claims will stop her throwing up but while Zay distracts him she pours it out the window into her neighbours plants. Within the hour they’re all dead, and she thanks God that Riley has rubbed off on her at least a little.

 

On the third day, right after her fever breaks he texts her, from where he’s probably alone in Chem, a photo of a tiny stack of pancakes with lines of green coming out of them like vomit.. 

 

‘ _look Maya. It’s you’_

She texts back. ‘ _Damn right it is’_

All at once she's drowning in exams, Farkle is manic and Riley is not visible underneath mounds of paper. Zay just lies on the floor screaming into the carpet until someone brings in a bowl of chips. She reads over her notes and, upon realising she's well and truly fucked, sits on the roof her building and drinks straight vodka for what feels like days.

 

She likes school, she likes learning. But it all the more reminds her of everyone’s future plans that she still doesn’t have, how Riley’s going to North Western, Farkle to Yale, Zay for a Gap Year and Lucas to NYU for some fancy vet program. She's got nothing, and doesn’t understand fucking calculus to boot.

 

Her history is decent, only because of the ever enduring Mr Mathews and she's alright at Geography because she likes looking at places that aren’t here. But she's failed Math and probably science and the subway was late on the day of her Art History so she lost 45 minutes and _oh._ If you look carefully you can actually see her life collapsing around her ears.

 

She doesn’t even turn up to the English exam and Riley drags the lot of them to her apartment. She locks the door, and Cowboy _breaks it down,_ bursting in through her apartment door 20 minutes before they're due to start as she stares from where she's sitting on her kitchen bench.

 

“You're going to the exam.” Farkle says.

 

“Shove it up your ass” is her response. She's still a little tipsy from the night before when she’d accidentally stayed up all night with a wine bottle and her mum, they’d painted each-others nails and her mum said she was proud of her no matter what happened. She’d lain in her bed hours later and thought of the time she had to have most of her hair cut off after she tried to paint it blue, and how Katy had cut her hair to the same length so she wouldn’t feel so alone.

 

“If you don’t get up I’m going to drag you there” he says and Riley is nodding behind him. Zay is examining a new vase her mum bought at a farmers market last week.

 

“You won't “she says and, as it turns out, he would. Technically he doesn’t drag her but he does lift her up over her shoulder and walk out the door like she weighs little more than a plastic bag.  She keeps struggling but Riley is saying ‘Peaches you’ll be fine’ and Zay is whooping in agreement and Farkle is saying ‘Maya just remember your language features. I did every past exam all the way back to 1992 and language features are vital.’ She stops fighting, she's too tired.

 

After the week is out it sort of hits her that she's _leaving high school_ and _never coming back_ and she still doesn’t really have a plan and then she's crying. The huge heaving crying that feels like someone is physically removing her organs from her body, she tries to dial Riley but there is just a busy tone and she's away, sunbathing with her Grandparent’s and Uncle Boing at the beach for a weekend.

 

 She thinks about calling him, about picking up the phone and dialling Sundance, but doesn’t, because wanting him around her all the time is selfish and then she's crying even harder because her stupid crush has manifested into this huge gaping thing that is going to blow up at some point. It’s just got to, someone is bound to notice the way she gravitates toward him like he’s the fucking sun or something. Fuck. Oh fuckfuckfuck this is _so bad._ This is really, really _bad._

 

She forces herself to pull it together, going to the bathroom and standing under the freezing shower for so long her toes go blue. She’s Maya fucking Hart for Christ’s sake, she will not sit here and cry over this bullshit. She is more than this, everything will work itself out. She crawls under the covers and flicks through old photos of her mum and her and then she's asleep so nothing matters at all, really.

 

 

To celebrate the end of exams all five of them go to the movies, she ends up next to him and steals his popcorn the entire way through while whispering snarky comments about the shitty actors and abysmal dialogue. He laughs and somehow his arm is around the back of her chair, he joins in with her bitchy comments and ends up shoving the remaining popcorn down her shirt while she squirms, trying not to make a noise. They leave and Zay asks her what she thought but she can’t remember a single damn thing about the movie.

 

Riley goes to visit colleges with Farkle, Zay officially decides to go to Paris, or Quebec or Berlin or maybe even Alaska for his Gap year. Maya paints more and applies for a bunch of art classes and paints more again. She draws Riley a picture of the two of them, Zay a shot of him in ballet class, Farkle a landscape of him eating the world like an apple. She draws him an enormous horse, and then changes it to a cowboy ranch, and then scraps that and just draws a straight up cowboy, then fucks all and gives him a painting she did of the ocean once that she didn't even know she wanted him to see. She draws a tiny cowboy hat in the corner so it doesn't look as serious but he hangs it in his room anyway and she grins every time she sees it.

 

Maybe she won't go to a huge fancy college, maybe she’ll just paint and go to art classes she can find around the city and work at the paint shop that Mr Bridges has already offered her a job at. She can kind of see it, her in a crappy flat working and painting and calling Riley every second day. She could see her mum every week and Shawn would come by to help paint her kitchenette and fix the leak in her shower. Mr Mathews would buy her 100 cans of bugs spray like a nerd and Topanga would yell at her landlord if he tried to raise the rent. Every time she thinks about it her whole body feels different, hopefull, like she would no longer be high school Maya but a different Maya all together. One that she might even like.

 

There are two weeks left of school and she still manages to nearly set fire to half the science room by lighting the Bunsen burner, then turning to gloat to Friar while simultaneously knocking it into the paper bin. He had bet her $10 she wouldn't do it, because she'd been a little skittish around fire ever since the famous ‘Scrambled Egg Iincident’ of sophomore year, where she’d set fire to not only the pan but the entire egg carton, but she'd taken his bet because she forgot her lunch money anyway and they both knew he wouldn't make her pay out if she lost.

 

No one notices until Yogi faints, and then the smoke alarms are blaring and something burning rips across the ankle of her jeans. Before anyone can do anything but scream loudly something warm is around her waist and is pulling her back, _it's an arm_ she thinks dully as it sets her down and shoves her backwards. It’s ten seconds before she realises he’s the one that's pulled her away, and another twenty before it clicks that that pounding noise isn’t the fire but the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. He has pulled a fire extinguisher out from behind the desk, and is doing whatever you do when you use a fire extinguisher. She can't really focus in on one thing and the room is very hot and she can't feel her own body.

 

He puts out the fire in about a minute and is still wearing his stupid safety goggles when he turns back to her. "Are you okay" he asks in a very non-Lucas voice, all croaky and sharp, his eyes are all over her like they're trying to leave a stain. Then it registers that her ankle is boiling and she looks down to only see that it's not boiling but rather burning, and the ankle of her jeans is on fire. And then she can't see much of anything because it's clouded in white smoke from the fire extinguisher and then she's coughing and then a lot of people are calling her name and then she can hear his voice. _Maya, Maya can you hear me? Maya are you alright? Jesus Fuck-_ and then she feels herself exit her brain through the back door.

 

 

She wakes up in a bed, to the sound of a lot of people talking at once with her ankle feeling like someone has put it in a pool with the sun. _Shit_ that hurts, she blinks because her eyes won't stop watering. “Maya! Maya Oh My God Maya” Riley is averaging about 8 ‘Oh My Gods’ per second and she can hear a nurse saying “she needs quiet” dimly in the background but it's too late. Riley is everywhere on her and then Topanga is asking if she’s _alright sweetie_ and her mum is all _oh baby girl how are you feeling_ and Zay is asking if she wants an almond from the bag he brought her at the vending machine and Farkle is yelling out the door for Mr Mathews who is calling Shawn out in the hall. They're all crowded into her tiny hospital room around her bandaged foot and her heart is so warm inside her chest she's afraid she might catch on fire for the second time in one day.

Next to her she can feel something on her neck, and she turns to find that it's just him staring. He's got his elbows on his knees with hands clasped together on the disgusting green hospital chair and he's the only person in the room who isn't saying anything. It's like he thinks if he stops looking at her she'll disappear, and all she's hearing is ‘ _Maya are you alright Jesus Fuck’_ over and over again in her head. “You okay?” He says low and it feels like he is hinging a lot on hthe answer. She nods and is struck by the thought that he spends rather a lot of his time looking at her. Then her view is obstructed by Riley, who is now trying to kiss her cheek repeatedly while being held back by Farkle.

She's discharged about twenty minutes later, instructed to come back tomorrow to change the bandage and that she's only got the crutches for a week so to _not_ draw all over them (Mr Mathews made her write this down because he's a sadist and she tells him so). Riley instructs that she _must_ come over for a sleepover and in the end Topanga has to chase her own daughter off at their subway stop with a rolled up newspaper because she's got Model UN in the early the next morning and it's only a Tuesday. Riley is ridiculous and calls Maya the minute she gets home, refusing to hang up for hours. Her mum bails on work and Zay, Farkle and Lucas come up to her room to eat chips, or rather, throw chips at each other.

 

Zay keeps asking her what it was like to be on fire, and then Farkle is talking about the temperature of the fire and how it would've reacted to skin, and she feels herself drifting off against her headboard. She feels something flick her against her eyelid, and opens her eyes to see him with a shit eating grin on his face. “You can't hurt me, I'm injured” she protests.

 

“Fuck injured, Short stack”

 

“Don't you mean ‘ _Jesus Fuck’_ Friar?”

 

He looks confused for a minute until it dawns on him, then he's got a look on she can't quite place. “You ah, I mean, you heard that? You- How do you know that was even me?” He's flustered which is why she talks without thinking.

 

“I think I'd recognise your voice even if I was dead.” There it is. There it fucking is, out of her mouth before she realises she's said it. He's staring again, and she's blinking because she can't believe what she just said. That is big deal, friends do not say _I think I would recognise your voice even if I was dead_ and mean it.  Surely he must know now, all at once she feels a weight lift off her chest at the same time Farkle says “Maya we’re gunna go, we promised Riley we would swing by Bay Window and tell her how you were before  we head home.” Lucas is biting his lip and then gets up, mutters something under his breath before get shutting the door to her room and leaving her alone.

 

She fells so much lighter it's insane, she could float away if she didn't have a huge bandage on her foot. He must know now, and she is still hazy from the morphine but now it's _out._ Now she can get over it, now she can have proof that he won't pick her because there is some tiny insignificant part of her- the part where she thinks it means something that he puts out fires on her ankles and buys salt and vinegar chips even though he hates them and pushes trolleys out past parking lots- that thinks he might just choose her. She is in that space that drugs put you in just before sleep where anything is possible. She could get over Lucas. She could kiss Lucas and Riley would still love her the same. She could create a planet where flowers don't die once you pick them.

 

 

She has to wear the bandage for the remaining two weeks of school and have it changed every second day, the entire thing is the most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to her but at least she has her crutches to draw on. Zay and Farkle try to carry her on their shoulders across the hall once and she falls into a locker, hitting her head and laughing too hard to care. Riley bakes her brownies and Huckleberry eats nearly half of them while she is in the bathroom, she hits him with both crutches and he mashes a few into her hair but runs away laughing before she can hit him again.

 

They're not talking about it, but he's too smart to not have caught on. He avoids her eyes sometimes and won't sit right next to her at _Topanga’s_ anymore. It’s a wonder he hasn't realised before, she's the opposite of subtle, it's so weird, when she's around him she is smarter and funnier and feels good, he makes her want to be better than her shitty self. Riley is texting someone she met at college orientation and he seems nice, she says she wants to meet new boys and date new boys and kiss new boys and admits, when she's tipsy on hard lemonade, that she doesn't think she's going to be a repeat of her parents but that she is going to be okay with that.

 

 

Riley doesn't have to be a repeat of anything, she is wonderful just as she is. Maya tells her this, also tipsy, on the same night and Riley’s eyes start watering as she leans against her shoulder. “Peaches, I don't think you know how lovely you are so I'm just going to tell you. You are the most lovely person in the world and I intend to tell you this every day for the rest of our lives.” She says it with such sincerity, and Maya realises that Riley has become part of her, like a limb or a strip of skin, she could build coliseums or museums or empires and still not have enough space to store all of her love for her. She kisses the top of her head and shuts her eyes tight to keep from crying, because Riley is her favourite person on the planet and she can't afford to fuck this up.

 

 

During graduation there are too many taken photos to count, ones in her cap, with her mum, with the Mathews, with Shawn, Riley and the others. Her robes are enormous on her because they accidentally gave her the medium instead of the small, and Lucas pulls her cap down over her eyes so she can't see. She jumps on his back to pull him down and Farkle takes a photo while Zay’s mum calls for a group shot. They crowd around the huge oak tree out the back that Riley ripped her skirt in freshman year and smile, with their tongues all pressing against the back of their teeth.   

 

She gets her diploma and looks to the audience to see Shawn waving his arms around like an absolute moron while her mum wipes her eyes and Topanga tilts her head, smiling. Mr Mathews whistles from his place and she can hear Riley screaming from the ‘M’ row. She takes the rolled up piece of paper, does a rock on sign to the cheering audience and runs down the stairs.

 

Lucas gets his and everyone goes nuts, she's sitting on the end of her row and when he walks past her  she whispers “Sundance you sat in the wrong place, ‘C’ for Cowboy is further up your row.” He smiles so wide she's surprised his entire face doesn't just crack open, then pulls her cap down over her eyes before inexplicably pulling a lightbulb out from his robe pocket and chucking it at her while running down to his seat. She stares at it, sitting on her lap and all at once remembers the stupid trolley ride from months ago, with the stolen light bulbs and the marks on her knees and screaming so loud her cheeks hurt. He kept one, the son of a bitch kept one of the light bulbs even though according to Riley it was ‘technically stealing’.

 

There are parties they were invited to but fuck them, they go have Chinese takeout with each other and all the parents until it's 1 a.m. and they're all on Maya’s roof passing a bottle of wine between them while the parents are in bed. “I love you guys, I think I'd be dead without you all.” says Farkle into the dark, and Riley leans her head on his shoulder. “Same” answers Zay, and then Riley is saying ‘same’ and so is Lucas and then she's saying it.

 

"Here's to not being dead” Lucas raises the wine bottle and Zay calls “Here here!” Very loudly, before nearly wobbling off his chair into the asphalt stories bellow, making Riley yell and grab his arm.

 

Everyone ditches around 3, and she's left sitting on her bed too tired to sleep, staring at that photo of the lot of them at Zay’s party ages ago, thinking about Riley getting over Lucas and Farkle starting to pack his boxes and how she forgot her water bottle in the Chem lab and Mr Mathews kissing her forehead at dinner and her mum crying and the diploma sitting on her desk and her wonderfully crappy possibly-future apartment that will be full of her art and light bulbs and _here's to not being dead._

Her phone rings at 4 and she answers it on the second ring without looking at the ID.

 

“Hart”

_"_ Sundance”

 

There is a silence, and she wonders if he has forgotten she is on the other end of the line. Saying something smart seems impossible however, this night to momentous, to important, she can feel it swelling inside her stomach.

 

“Your robes were too big for you today. I- I was just calling to make sure you knew.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” This is a very odd thing to call her about at four in the morning, but the sun is coming up and time doesn't seem to apply to this entire day, it feels infinitely big, as if she will continue to live in it for the rest of her life.

 

“Maya”

 

“Yeah.” The tips of the sun are coming through the cracks in the old toothpaste billboard on the apartment across the street. Her lungs are full of something that is not air.

 

“Say something”

 

“Why?” Her brain cannot work fast enough to figure him out tonight, her mind is busy thinking of every memory she's ever had all at once.

 

“Because I like hearing you talk.”

 

Maybe she's dreaming. “No one likes listening to me talk. Only Riles. Only Riley will ever want me.” Maybe if she explains it this way then he will understand. People like Riley, they _want_ Riley. Riley is kind and smart and important and everything good. She is awful and got to third base under the bleachers with Adam Sylo and can't hold her liquor nearly as well as she wants to and had to be dragged to her English exam and _is not a good person._

 

“I want you.”

 

The first rays of sun hit the window, yellow and pouring over the crappy carpet stain from where the roof leaks because it's right under the bathroom. Her eyes are watering and the heels she picked are pinching her feet. The room feels exhausted and heavy, if only she could fall asleep without waking up for a long time. She shuts her eyes.

 

“No you don't.” She says, and hangs up.

 

The next day she paints until her fingers feel like falling off, then goes to Riley's for dinner and eats Topanga’s Mac’n’Cheese without really saying anything. Being not in high school anymore feels so odd, purely because she didn't know it defined her so much. She's always just been in school, and now that she's out is both liberating and utterly fucking terrifying. She's got to be a real person who makes decisions and choices about housing and the brand of butter she likes, like an _adult,_ or something.

 

Riley says she feels the same way, that she's worried about packing for college and leaving behind the entire life she's had for seventeen years. They go to Farkle’s and look through a few of his boxes, all duvet covers and about seven kinds of toothbrush (one for each day of the week) purely for something to do. When Shawn gets back from Jersey in a month he said he’d take her to look at apartments with Mr Mathews, until then she's going to work at the art shop and not think about the lightbulb sitting on her nightstand.

Zay goes paintballing with some people from his History Class and gets a huge cut from falling over on his hip because he’s a moron, so he steals her old burn crutches which she got to keep after doodling all over them and calls himself and ‘injured ducking’ for three days until his own mother throws a grapefruit at his head. She’s invited to Danielle Toren’s actual-graduation party and Riles can't go because she’s going to some concert with Julia from Homeroom that night. Zay says he’d _love_ to go but he’s _injured_ and that’s when Maya takes a crutch and shoves it into his stomach, giving him another bruise.

 

They haven’t talked since graduation when he calls her again at midnight, while she’s watching _Jeremy Kyle_ in boxers and a singlet with ‘JOHN QUINCY ADAMS CHEER SQUAD’ on the front that she took from Riley. Her Mum’s got the late shift and she answered because she assumed it was her calling to check in, she did that sometimes.

 

“Hey” he says.

 

She chokes on the stack of Cheetos she’d just shoved into her mouth at the sound of his voice. “Hi” she coughs.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Yeah” she thumps her chest and grimaces. Her throat is closing up for reasons unrelated to Cheetos.

 

“Are you, um, going to Danielle’s on Sunday?”

 

She thinks of lying but finds she can’t, because it’s Huckleberry and he would know. “I was going to.”

 

“Good.”

 

It’s quiet down the line just as Jeremy yells “YOU LYING BASTARD, YOU _ARE_ THE FATHER.” She wants to sit here with nothing but the light of the TV and him on the phone for the rest of her life, and she almost tells him so. Almost.

 

“Stop watching _Jeremy Kyle_. You always get irrationally angry when you watch him.”

 

“I _do not”_

“You do. You always end up bitching about all the people and then getting tired of Jeremy going on about _the children.”_ She can hear his faux hand on heart gesture from down the phone.

 

“Alright, but I would hardly call that _irrational_ anger, it’s perfectly rational to find everyone on this show irritating and I bet even _Jeremy_ gets tired of going on about _the children_ all the time.”

 

It’s like graduation never happened, and they're talking like they would any night he would call. About the new boots she got and Lucas’s shitty Geo mark and dumb _Jeremy Kyle_ and if you eat the hamburger or the fries first and Zay’s dumb paint balling story he’s told a billion times over that somehow always gets more and more extravagant, the latest with him ending up jumping in front of a real bullet for the President that was somehow shot by a bear holding a gun.

 

They hang up around three, and _I want you_ plays on loop as Maya drifts to sleep.

 

 

(The weird part is, there is no fanfare, she did not wake up to an earthquake. It starts with her waking up late and brushing her teeth on the way to work before spitting in a pile of shrubs next to her subway entrance.  There is nothing to indicate that this Sunday will be any different to the last, which is somehow the best and worst bit.)

 

 

At Danielle’s it’s hot and she wishes that she’d done her hair up because yeah, it looks better wavy and down but her neck is sticky. She’s been there barely an hour before she’s considering going, they only have beer and three people have already ‘accidentally’ brushed up against her ass and Friar is nowhere in sight.  She sends Farkle to find Smackle because he’s getting edgy, and that’s when Aaron Sylo’s ex-girlfriend walks up to her and slaps her straight across the face.

 

It stings, like the burn scars on her ankle and _shit,_ she can feel her entire cheek rupturing red. A small cut from a nail is leaking from under her eye. She doesn’t even have time to recover before-

 

“That’s for my boyfriend, Bitch!” and she throws an entire cup of beer right down Maya’s front.

 

It drips down her face, eyes shut and mouth open, she can feel into seeping into her bra and making her stomach wet. She opens her eyes to what’s-her-name’s triumphant face and the entire party staring.

 

_Don’t do it_ says that part of her brain, _walk away, you deserve it, walk away._ And maybe, if Riley were there, she would have, but Riley wasn’t and there is a roaring in her ears that sounds a lot like blood, or maybe war, or maybe God. Her fist is curling together on reflex and her arm is back and then she’s punched so-and-so in the jaw in the space of about three and a half seconds.

 

Her knuckles ache, and the girl is on the floor screaming murder, _oh fuck_ is all she can think because she _should not_ have done that and the poor girl is probably drunk or high and now Maya has _broken her jaw_ for doing something that was totally justified. Her brain is banging against the side of her skull, hot and hard like sex or a gunshot.

 

Someone is storming into her, but she can't process it through the fog of her brain until she’s being slammed against a wall, held up by the collar. “Back off, slut” Aaron Sylo is whispering against her ear and he isn’t kissing her under the bleachers anymore. A bruise is trumpeting through the back of her head. No one is doing anything and she wants to crawl back into her bed and not wake up ever again, her head hurts, her head hurts, her head hurts. She wants out, she wants out, she wants out.

 

Then suddenly there is a much bigger thing, a train or an airplane or a lightning bolt rocketing into the mass of boy pressed against her. Aaron Sylo goes flying towards the keg, cracking the table and lying in the wreck looking shell-shocked. She reaches up and touches the back of her head only to pull her hand back and see blood, but she must have hit the wall harder than she thought because it’s Lucas standing in front of her. Lucas is standing in front of her. Lucas is standing in front of her.

 

Dimly, she can hear Farkle yelling if she's okay, and people swarming forward to help what’s-her-name on the floor, and then Lucas has her by the hand and is dragging her outside. It’s cold, maybe it’ll rain later, and she’s up against the wall while he runs his hands down her sides and keeps talking _Maya. Maya say something. Maya, shit._ “Maybe it’ll rain later” she says and she wants to kiss him, and then she wants to scream because she wants to _kiss him._

“Do you think you have a concussion?” he asks and no, you’ve had a concussion before when you were fifteen and fell out of that wheelie bin while trying to prove to Zay that she _did to_ weigh enough to squash down the rubbish. No, this isn’t a concussion, but it’s a fog in her head and blood through her hair and his hand on her cheek which is somehow worse. Farkle runs out, panting and asking if she’s all right while Smackle folds her arms against the cold next to him.

 

“I’m going to take her home” says Lucas and Farkle nods, and she feels her heartbeat thudding. They're walking to the subway and he keeps asking if she's ok and she keeps wanting to ask him why he did that, because everybody’s going to think he’s insane now as she’s _Maya Hart_ and she broke a girls jaw when the girl being pissed at her had every reason to be. On the subway he wraps his arm around her waist and she doesn’t remember much else because then he’s standing outside her building and it really looks like it’s going to rain.

 

“Thanks. For- um, walking me home and looking out for me and stuff.” It’s the first thing she’s said the whole way over here, and it comes out in rush without pauses.

 

“Your head’s still bleeding.” He reaches out to touch the now dried blood that was running down her neck.

 

“I'm tough.”

 

“I know.”

 

His hand is still on her neck, fingers just on the underside of her jaw. Can he hear her pulse? He must be able to, it is about to burst through her skin.

 

“Maya” he mumbles and he’s very close to her face, she could put her forehead against his without any effort at all. His thumb is running under her jawline, it smells of rain. “I think I like you a lot more than I'm supposed to.”

 

His face is tattooing itself against the side of her skull again. _I think I like you a lot more than I'm supposed to._

 

She wants to kiss him so badly there is a guttural feeling in her stomach, wanting to pull closer like she is the earth and he is her moon. His nose is against hers and his index finger is pressing against the pulse in her neck. She can feel the imprints of that trolley against her knees.

 

He kisses her, or maybe she kisses him, and his hair is in her fingers and she’s running her tongue over his bottom lip and it is like a rush of blood to the head.

 

Three minutes later it’s raining, and kissing in the rain is nowhere near as romantic as it looks in those movies Riley likes, because it’s wet and water is slipping into her mouth and she can still feel the beer making her bra smell like alcohol. He pulls back laughing, and she has a horrible feeling that he’s going to do something cheesy as hell and drag her out into the rain but he doesn’t, so she shoves him sideways into a growing puddle and bursts out laughing at the sight of his now soaked jean bottoms.

 

“Call me, Huckleberry!” she yells over the growing storm because her mum’s waiting up and it’s already one thirty.

 

“Of course!” he yells back like a loser, still standing in the puddle and grinning at her like she’s worth a grin like that.

 

She runs to her elevator, pushes her floor and leans against the side smiling so hard her teeth hurt. Her hair is sticking to her neck, and her shoes are fucked but she can't stop grinning. Her crappy real future apartment could have two coat hangers and that painting of the sea she did hanging up in the doorway.

 

She steps into her apartment, and the phone is already ringing. 

 

 


End file.
